Animal Magnetism

ANIMAL MAGNETISM

"Animal magnetism" is a term popularized by the Viennese doctor Franz Mesmer. In Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal (Propositions concerning animal magnetism; 1779) he defined it as the "property of the animal body that makes it susceptible to the influence of celestial bodies and the reciprocal action of those around it, made manifest by its analogy with the magnet." He believed that a cosmic fluid attracted animate beings to one another. He considered poor receptivity to the fluid to be pathogenic, and the cure consisted in transmission of the fluid.

In Paris, Mesmer enjoyed enormous success. Faced with a crush of clients, he installed a "tub," a round device around which patients sat in a group, and that was designed to concentrate and redistribute the fluid, resulting in beneficial convulsions. Mesmerism claimed to be a scientific discovery as well as a secret associated with initiation into a group of adepts.

In 1784 two committees appointed by the Académies Royales des Sciences et de Médecine (Royal Academies of Science and Medicine) drafted a report for the king on Mesmer's "discovery." The astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly, reporter of the first committee, concluded that the fluid likely did not exist, and he sketched out an explanation in terms of "imagination" and "imitation." In a secret report, released after the French Revolution, he noted the sexual nature of the convulsions, which he compared to orgasm.

That same year Armand de Puységur, a disciple of Mesmer, discovered (or rediscovered) that one can provoke calm crises that resemble the natural somnambulism of certain sleepers. He referred to this as artificial or induced somnambulism. From this point onward, magnetized subjects were no longer "convulsives," but "somnambulists," as in Puységur's model. The somnambulists appeared changed: they uttered prophecies, showed signs of split personalities, and, under the influence of the fluid, which was supposed to be transmitted by the "passes" of the magnetizer, exhibited extraordinary signs of "lucidity." Puységur and his followers developed a standard form of treatment that differed considerably from what was often suggested by medical authorities. The magnetized patient directed the treatment; the magnetizer questioned the patient and let her talk (almost all patients were female). It was assumed that in a somnambulistic state the person had self-healing capacities. Magnetism became a social and cultural phenomenon of considerable importance.

In 1813, in his public lectures, Abbé José Custodio de Faria claimed that there was no need of a fluid to induce sleep, since by a simple command, a state of "lucid sleep" could be brought about in a subject. In 1823 and 1826 the physician Alexandre Bertrand returned to Bailly's work on imagination and imitation. He connected Mesmeric phenomena to a traditional psychology of ecstasy, currently understood as a trance. An opposition was thus established, before the term "hypnotism" became popular, between orthodox fluidic Mesmeric magnetism and a heterodox psychological movement represented in France by Faria, Bertrand, and Joseph Noizet.

In Mesmeric terminology, the "relationship" refers primarily to the relation between the magnetized patient and the magnetizer. The literature in the field mentioned the sexual aspect of the relationship only rarely and with reticence. Yet love between a magnetizer and a somnambulist did become a distinct theme in fiction. Animal magnetism even became a kind of platitude, if we are to believe the article "Magnetism" in Gustave Flaubert's Dictionary of Accepted Ideas : "An agreeable subject of conversation that can also be used to 'impress women.' "

Jacqueline Carroy

See also: Hypnosis; Liebeault, Ambroise Auguste; Occultism; Salpêtrière, hosptial; Suggestion.

Bibliography

Darnton, Robert. (1968). Mesmerism and the end of the Enlightenment in France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Ellenberger, Henri F. (1970). The discovery of the unconscious: the history and evolution of dynamic psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.

Flaubert, Gustave. (1954). Dictionary of accepted ideas (Jacques Barzun, Trans.). Norfolk, CT: New Directions Books.

Mesmer, Anton (1779). Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal. Geneva: P.F. Didot le jeune.

Puységur, Armand Marie Jacques de Chastenet, marquis de. (1786). Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire et à l'établissement du magnétisme animal. London: s.n.

Rausky, Franklin. (1977). Mesmer ou la révolution thérapeutique. Paris: Payot.

Roussillon, René. (1992). Du baquet de Mesmer au "baquet" de S. Freud. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.